New build - Unfair Changes to parking allotment

GwylimT

This happened where I live, we as a household have two cars so we purchased a property with two parking spaces, others chose not to and parked in visitor parking. Now our estates team lock/unlock bollards on visitor spaces when necessary to prevent residents using them. Since they have done this visitors can actually park and those with more cars than parking spaces have survived, they just had to walk a few metres.

Guest101

GwylimT wrote: »

This happened where I live, we as a household have two cars so we purchased a property with two parking spaces, others chose not to and parked in visitor parking. Now our estates team lock/unlock bollards on visitor spaces when necessary to prevent residents using them. Since they have done this visitors can actually park and those with more cars than parking spaces have survived, they just had to walk a few metres.

This being private land, they could ofcourse park anywhere they choose as i imagine the site is not littered with contractual notice signs?

dodger1

AdrianC wrote: »

That's simple, Dodger. It doesn't apply to them, because they're _special_...

Ah, my bad, I didn't know

moneyistooshorttomention

PasturesNew wrote: »

Always buy the spaces you need - you can't rely on the "goodwill" of others to accept if you have more cars than you own spaces for. It's the abuse of the "goodwill", causing people's visitors to not have the space those owners believed they were buying when they bought their flat, that's the problem.

If I buy one space and access to visitors' spaces, then I expect my visitors to often be able to find a space .... I'll accept there are times they can't and advise them accordingly. What I wouldn't accept is that there are no visitors' spaces because rude/arrogant/'entitled to' mentality means they are full of 2nd-cars. That's just theft of my rights and what I'd have paid for.

The thing is that ownership of these places will change over the years. Maybe the current set of people work things out okay all round and there are plenty of the visitor spaces left for visitors, but that wont necessarily apply in the future (ie after ownership of some of these places has changed hands).

People parking cars in my particular little area I have recently bought in were managing fine until I bought my house. The reason they were managing fine is because previous owners of my house allowed some of my parking (land that I own) to be used by them. Then I moved in and have uses for all my own land and there isn't any of it to "spare" to allow for other people parking on it and I don't want anyone to look like they've acquired any rights of use over my land. Result = they cant park on my (owned) land any more, but they have too many vehicles to fit into the space they actually have available. I can see that it frequently causes them problems. So they had the "goodwill" they needed previously in order to deal with the effect of their own actions, but now they don't any more.

I am sorry for them for having these problems but its not my problem. They should have foreseen that a future owner of my house might decide to keep the use of their own land exclusively for themselves.

In the same way, you cant tell if some of the future owners of your place might be people who have loads of visitors and need all those visitor places available for visitors.

SerialRenter

Has anyone seen housing market lately? What makes them think that a working couple would be able to afford to buy or rent a place with two spaces?

Move house? Sell the "spare" car? it's easy to say, but if you're a couple scraping by each month, both working full time in different jobs, in a lot of cases thats just not a realistic proposition.

AdrianC

Gosh, you're right, SerialRenter.

Everybody should be entitled to just _have_ things they can't afford to pay for.

GwylimT

Guest101 wrote: »

This being private land, they could ofcourse park anywhere they choose as i imagine the site is not littered with contractual notice signs?

You can only park either in residents parking or visitors parking, unless you own a flying vehicle.

SerialRenter

Ofcourse not AdrianC,

But there seems to be quite a disparity between what's been said in this thread and what actually happens in real life.

We're talking about flats here. Which will mostly be people who cant afford their own house with its own drive. Choice is limited, the idea that they should just buy somewhere else is ridiculous. They very likely can't, so we're saying one of the partners should stop working because of an unenforced rule in a carpark?

This may be a point of irritation in some places, but far from being universally true. Anecdotally, most seem to not really care, people have cars, they've got to be stored somewhere, people bend rules to do so. Such is life.

moneyistooshorttomention

Well...in that case...there's always lateral thinking:
- public transport (yep...I know that's a swear word in some peoples books, because they're "special")

- one of them to change jobs, if possible, if need be

- one of them using a bike or motorbike instead of a car

- perish the thought (ie because they're "special"), but one of them parking a few minutes walk away from their home, There is this concept of walking. Worth trying - its actually quite good for you...

AdrianC

SerialRenter wrote: »

Ofcourse not AdrianC,

But there seems to be quite a disparity between what's been said in this thread and what actually happens in real life.

We're talking about flats here. Which will mostly be people who cant afford their own house with its own drive. Choice is limited, the idea that they should just buy somewhere else is ridiculous. They very likely can't, so we're saying one of the partners should stop working because of an unenforced rule in a carpark?

This may be a point of irritation in some places, but far from being universally true. Anecdotally, most seem to not really care, people have cars, they've got to be stored somewhere, people bend rules to do so. Such is life.

Trouble is, it's not "bending the rules", it's taking what isn't yours because - after all - it's "victimless", right? Yes, that's EXACTLY what you're advocating.

Poor lambs can't afford as much parking space as they want. So it's OK for them to just take some of what isn't theirs.

What next? Poor lambs can't afford as much petrol as they want? So it's OK for them to drive off without paying? Poor lambs can't afford car insurance?